This week, we were honored to present and compete at Building Technologies Innovation Open 2018 as one of their finalist teams. The BT Innovation Open is an event organized by Siemens and designed to foster innovation for their building technology division. As a Siemens company, J2 Innovations participated by contributing on one of the innovation teams. Out of 60 applications, our team was selected as one of eight finalists!

This was a unique opportunity for engineers, developers, and project managers to get in front of business leaders in order to pitch their big idea. The format was modeled after Shark Tank, with the preparation, intensity, and excitement that goes along with refining your presentation down to just five minutes.

Through the experience, new bonds were created, new skills were developed, and everyone gained a different perspective outside of their normal roles. It was fun to hear so many innovative ideas within the intelligent building space. We hope to see them all come to fruition in future products and services.

“We are proud to have an amazing pool of BT team members that contribute to the growth of our business with their innovative ideas.” – David Hopping, Siemens Building Technologies Americas

Build Dashboards Quickly in FIN Stack. The FIN Stack development team has been working on a solution to creating dashboards in FIN and is excited to announce a solution! The team has pre-designed and put together a variety of easy-to-use charts and gauges, each with their own configuration wizards. [Read more…]

As we are in the final phase of voting for the 2017 ControlTrends Awards, vendors are submitting media for ControlTtends to post to help promote their finalist. In this video, from J2 Innovations, meet Gerard Huff, Director of Technical Services and finalist for the 2017 ControlTrends Trainer of the Year. Gerard manages the development and delivery of technical training and documentation. He teachs HVAC, Building Automation, and IoT Solutions. He’s been all over the world this year training End Users and System Integrators, and also training J2 OEM trainers through their Train the Trainer program. If you like what you see click here and cast your vote for Gerard and all the other super stars of the HVAC and Smart Buildings Controls Industry.
If you would like to promote one of your finalists on ControlTrends reach out to either Ken or myself and we will get your media posted!

A lot has been going on here at J2 Innovations! We recently announced our game-changing technology FIN 4.0 along with exciting new FIN Certified Hosts platforms. Check out the video below to experience first hand how FIN 4.0 uses tagging, data modeling, and HTML 5 to fundamentally change our industry. Attention Systems Integrators! Get Jobs Done Faster and Easier — with industry leading software tools and cool applications that will help you sell more jobs, which you can engineer quicker, at a lower cost, generating more revenue for you — and more value for your customers.

Data, data everywhere! Big data is in vogue in the building automation and smart buildings controls industry, but like everything else that is new and exciting, there are lot’s of things that have to be dealt with once the initial buzz of excitement is replaced with “how the heck do we implement this?” For one thing, the cost… data might be free, but moving it around and using it can get expensive quickly.

So how does one avoid some of these big data pitfalls? To find out, Ken Smyers, tracked down one of the best big data people in the building automation and smart buildings space, Scott Muench from J2 Innovations. J2 is known for their easy to use graphical and data overlays, and as Scott explains to Ken, with Fin 4, things have gotten even easier and more cost effective. To find out what other big data tips Scott has, including the tagging convention you should insist on having, check out Ken’s interview with Scott.

Muench’s Corollary

J2 Fin’s very own Scott Muench was recently featured on AutomatedBuildings.com with an article about the benefits and payoffs of tagging and data modeling.

With the amount of connected devices increasing every day, potential value is also increasing exponentially. The reality is that it takes a lot of effort or mouse clicks to derive value from the data in the connected world. J2 Innovations has been focusing their efforts on great software and more efficient workflows to unlock this potential. Click here to read more.

A lot has been going on here at J2 Innovations! We recently announced our game-changing technology FIN 4.0 along with exciting new FIN Certified Hosts platforms. Check out the video below to experience first hand how FIN 4.0 uses tagging, data modeling, and HTML 5 to fundamentally change our industry.

Attention Systems Integrators! Get Jobs Done Faster and Easier — with industry leading software tools and cool applications that will help you sell more jobs, which you can engineer quicker, at a lower cost, generating more revenue for you — and more value for your customers.

A very cool and powerful version of FIN has hit the streets. Check out FIN 4.0 and see just how the complete BAS/BOS Framework from J2 leverages tagging and data modeling. How it implements responsive web design and a mobile first focus
utilizes browser based tools and embracing the HTML5 standard, allowing full application suite functionality across all devices
Fin makes it faster, easier, and better than ever before. Click here to find out more.

J2 Innovation highlights Systems Integrator’s Digie Award winning success in Detroit, Michigan. In order to integrate the smartest building in downtown Detroit, Hepta Control Systems had to not only be innovative, but be inventive. The goal was to fully integrate everything sharing data in the 66,000 square foot facility from the electrical systems to computer systems to mechanical systems. On the integration list were the mounted PDU, electrical switch gear, rack asset management, computer room HVAC, building HVAC, fire alarm, leak detection, standby emergency generation, and lighting.

Hepta Control Systems is known for transforming buildings into intelligent, responsive, environmentally conscious structures, which is why they were perfect for the job. By using FIN as a development platform for their DCIM software named EntroCIM, HCS was able to get the product to market in a fraction of the time. EntroCIM was a crucial component that made the total data center integration possible because of its fully-customizable nature. The software tracks and analyzes the use of energy to allow the operators of the facility to keep it running efficiently and sustainably.

“The goal was to create an intuitive interface that’s easy to use despite the fact that it’s responding to an incredibly complex facility,” said Jason Houck, CIO of HCS. “The end result was the development of an application unlike anything out there.”

This capacity for forward-thinking resulted in HCS earning the 2015 Digie Award for the Most Intelligent Specialty Building, a prestigious honor to receive among exceptional competition in the intelligent building community.